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"Without any irony, I can honestly say boardgaming saved my life. BGG has been my gateway to that."
-
Matthew Aaron (lrdkudzu)

Brian Carnes is a long time fan of all things geeky, historical, or high technology. As a child his two main passions were drawing old sailing ships, and drawing cutaway rockets and airplanes. With a passion for technology, Brian has worked as an IT professional for over 12 years, but also has attended and or volunteered conventions for gaming or sci-fi. He also has worked at his family’s booth at the Ohio Renaissance festival selling pewter. Most of Brian’s family is creative in some way with passions ranging from fine art to jewelry to ceramics and beyond. Content previously to build geeky things and write mainly as a hobby, in 2007 Brian had a revival of his family’s art business passion with his cousin Sarah. He began casting sailing ships to go with his age of sail game that he had been working on for the last eight years.

Encouraged by the interest received at shows. Brian started Sea Dog Game Studios to make innovative creative products of interest to his fellow geeks and gamers. He began seeking out fellow creatives with a passion for making great ideas come to life. Sea Dog Studios began to make a showing at various conventions where Brian and his crew of awesome SWAT pinjas (pirate ninjas for all you non geeks) worked to make the most impressive large scale games possible.

In 2009 Sea Dog Studios took two major steps forward. First, Brian and his wife Elizabeth acquired his family’s 26 year old pewter line. This had previously been sold almost exclusively at Renaissance fairs under the name “Lizards Wizards and Ringz.” As re imagined, the line is being sold under the Lizards Wizards product name as a product line for Sea Dog’s new pewter brand Valkyrie pewter. It is sold not only at ren fairs, but also at conventions. Brian rightly envisioned that the Renaissance fantasy jewelry business was of great interest to his fellow geeks and gamers!

The second big step was the beta launch of a new game called TechCommander. This is a sci fi action game that not only draws inspiration from the pages of science and technology journals and the latest thinking about high tech warfare, but from another geeky passion, the video game. Originally planned for a quiet couple years of testing, the deathmatch became a very popular convention game wherever it was played. Origins 2010 marks the official launch of TechCommander.

The core of SDGS is creative people who believe that we can still make things that are unique, and not part of the big corporate franchised machine. It is a labor of love to make that happen. Our products are created by many of the people you can meet running the games at the shows (just ask them!). We make them mostly by hand and hope to provide original products and new ideas to fellow geeks and Renaissance fans!